Linguistic Аspects of Black English
When two consonants
appear at the end of a word (for instance the st in test), they are often
reduced: the final t is deleted. This happens, to some extent, in every variety
of English including standard ones. In AAVE the consonant cluster is reduced
variably (i.e. it does not happen every time) and systematically.
Sociolinguists have shown
that the frequency of reduction can be expressed by a rule which takes account
of a number of interacting facts. Crucially, the frequency of reduction depends
on the environment in which the sound occurs. The following two factors, among
others, have been found to affect the frequency of reduction in consonant
clusters
If the next word starts
with a consonant, it is more likely to reduce than if the next word starts with
a vowel. For example, reduction is more likely to occur in west side (becoming Wes
side) than in west end.
A final t or d is more
likely to be deleted if it is not part of the past tense -ed than if it is.
(The past tense -ed suffix is pronounced as t or d or Id in English depending
on the preceding sound.) For example, reduction is more likely to occur in John
ran fast (becoming John ran fas) than in John passed the teacher in his car.
The th sounds: The
written symbol th can represent two different sounds in English: both an
"unvoiced" sound as in thought, thin and think, and a
"voiced" sound as in the, they and that. In AAVE the pronunciation of
this sound depends on where in a word it is found.
At the beginning of a
word, the voiced sound (e.g. in that) is regularly pronounced as d so 'the',
'they' and 'that' are pronounced as de, dey and dat. AAVE shares this feature
with many other nonstandard dialects, including those of the East Coast of
United States and Canada.
Less common in AAVE is
the pronunciation of the unvoiced sound as t. Thus 'thin' can become tin but
rarely does. This however is a very common feature of Caribbean creoles in
which 'think' is regularly pronounced as tink, etc. When the th sound is
followed by r, it is possible in AAVE to pronounce the th as f as in froat for
'throat'.
Within a word, the
unvoiced sound as in nothing, author or ether is often pronounced as f. Thus
AAVE speakers will sometimes say nufn 'nothing' and ahfuh 'author'. The voiced
sound, within a word, may be pronounced v. So 'brother' becomes bruvah, etc.
At the end of a word, th
is often pronounced f in AAVE. For instance 'Ruth' is pronounced Ruf; 'south'
is pronounced souf. When the preceding sound is a nasal (e.g. n or m) the th is
often pronounced as t as in tent for 'tenth'; mont for 'month'. (10, 69)
The sounds l and r:
When they do not occur at
the beginning of a word l and r often undergoes a process known as
"vocalization" and are pronounced as uh. This is most apparent in a
post-vocalic position (after a vowel). For instance 'steal', 'sister', 'nickel'
become steauh, sistuh, nickuh. In some varieties of AAVE (e.g. in the Southern
US), r is not pronounced after the vowels o and u. The words door and doe, four
and foe, and sure and show can be pronounced alike.
Vowels. /Nasalized vowels:
When a nasal (n or m)
follows a vowel, AAVE speakers sometimes delete the nasal consonant and
nasalize the vowel. This nasalization is written with a tilde (~) above the
vowel. So 'man' becomes mã.
Nasals consonants and
front vowels:
In many varieties of
English, including standard varieties, the vowels i in pin and e in pen sound
different in all words. In AAVE, these sounds are merged before a nasal (like n
or m). So in AAVE pin and pen are pronounced with the same vowel. Most Southern
US varieties of English merge these vowels too, so this is only a distinctive
feature of AAVE in the northern United States.
Diphthongs:
Some vowels like those in
night and my or about and cow are called "diphthongs". This means
that when the vowel is pronounced, the tongue starts at one place in the mouth
and moves as the vowel is being pronounced. In AAVE the vowel in 'night' or in
'my' is often not a diphthong. So when pronouncing the words with this
diphthong, AAVE speakers (and speakers of Southern varieties as well) do not
move the tongue to the front top position. So 'my' is pronounced ma as in he's
over at ma sister's house.
Stress:
AAVE s from some other
varieties in the placement of stress in a word. So, where words like police, hotel
and July are pronounced with stress on the last syllable in Standard English,
in AAVE they may have stress placed on the first syllable so that you get po-lice,
ho-tel and Ju-ly.
Sounds:
Creole has
some characteristics which are associated with regional and working-class
varieties of English and some others which are found only in Caribbean Creole.
Some of the most important differences:
The vowel of
CUP is like the vowel of British English COP /kVp/
The vowel of
ALL is like the vowel of British English ARE /a:l/
The vowels of
DAY and HOME are diphthongs /dI@/ and /huom/
The first
consonant of THESE /Di:z/ is /d/: /di:z/
the first
consonant of THUMP /TVmp/ is /t/: /tVmp/ (16,128)
2. Grammar
peculiarities
Some of these
characteristics, notably double negatives and the omission of certain auxiliaries such as
the has in has been are also characteristic of general colloquial American
English.
The linguist William Labov carried
out and published the first thorough grammatical study of African American
Vernacular English in 1965.(37)
The copula BE is often dropped, as in Russian, Hebrew, Arabic and other
languages. For example: You crazy! ("You're crazy") or She my sister
("She's my sister"). The phenomenon is also observed in questions: Who
you? ("Who're you?") and Where you at? ("Where are you
(at)?"). On the other hand, a stressed is cannot be dropped: She is my
sister. (37)
The general rules
are:
- Only the forms is
and are (which in any case is often replaced by is) can be omitted
- These forms
cannot be omitted when they are pronounced with a stress (whether or not the
stress serves specifically to impart an emphatic sense to the verb's meaning).
- These forms
cannot be omitted when the corresponding form in Standard English cannot show
contraction (and vice-versa). For example, I don't know where he is cannot be
reduced to *I don't know where he because in Standard English the corresponding
reduction *I don't know where he's is likewise impossible. (Though I don't know
where he at is possible.)
Possibly some
other minor conditions apply as well.
Present-tense
verbs are uninflected for number/person: there is no -s ending in the
present-tense third-person singular. Example: She writes poetry ("She
writes poetry"). Similarly, was used for what in Standard English are
contexts for both was and were.
The word it or is
denotes the existence of something, equivalent to Standard English there in
"there is", or "there are". This usage is also found in the
English of the US South. Examples Is a doughnut in the cabinet
("There's a doughnut in the cabinet") and It ain't no spoon
("There isn't a spoon", also "They ain't no spoon").
Altered syntax in
questions: In “ Why they ain't growin'?” ("Why aren't they growing?")
and “Who the hell she think she is?” ("Who the hell does she think she
is?") lack the inversion of standard English. Because of this, there is
also no need for the auxiliary DO. (29, 48)
GRAMMAR AND STRUCTURE RULE IN WEST
AFRICAN LANGUAGE,
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BLACK ENGLISH
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construction of sentences without
the form of the verb to be
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He sick today.
They talkin about school now.
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Repetition of noun subject with
pronoun
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My father, he work there.
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Question patterns without do
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What it come to?
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Same form of noun for singular and
plural
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one boy; five boy
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No tense indicated in verb
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I know it good when he ask me
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Same verb form for all subjects
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I know; you know; he know; we know;
they know
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Sound Rule in West African
Languages
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Black English
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No consonant pairs
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jus (for just); men (for mend)
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Few long vowels or two-part vowel
(diphthongs)
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rat (for right); tahm (for time)
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No /r/ sound
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mow (for more)
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No /th/ sound
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substitution of /d/ or /f/ for
/th/; souf (for south) and dis (for this)
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Copula Deletion with
"To Be" and Other Characteristics
Example
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Name
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SE Meaning / Notes
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He workin'.
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Simple progressive
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He is working [currently].
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He be workin'.
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Habitual/continuative aspect
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He works frequently or habitually.
Better illustrated with "He be workin' Tuesdays."
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He stay workin'.
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Intensified continuative
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He is always working.
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He been workin'.
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Perfect progressive
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He has been working.
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He been had dat job.
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Remote phase (see below)
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He has had that job for a long time
and still has it.
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He done worked.
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Emphasized perfective
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He has worked. Syntactically,
"He worked" is valid, but "done" is used to emphasize the
completed nature of the action.[25]
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One of the most famous
grammatical characteristics of Black English is the use of the verb to be. Omission of the verb to be, or
copula deletion, is very typical of Black English. The "is" can be
omitted completely ("He Michael, too"). On the
other hand, in sentences
where the is or other forms of
be are not contracted in general Standard English usage, it is not deleted in
Black English
He finna go to work.
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Immediate future
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He's about to go to work. Finna is
a contraction of "fixing to"; though is also believed to show
residual influence of late 16th century archaism "would fain (to)",
that persisted until later in some rural dialects spoken in the Carolinas
(near the Gullah region).
"Fittin' to" is commonly thought to be another form of the original
"fixin' (fixing) to", and it is also heard as fitna, fidna, fixna,
and finsta.[26]
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I was walkin' home, and I had
worked all day.
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Preterite narration.
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"Had" is used to begin a
preterite narration. Usually it occurs in the first clause of the narration,
and nowhere else.
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The aspect marked
by stressed 'been' has been given many names, including perfect phase, remote
past, remote phase this article uses the third. Been here is stressed; in order
to distinguish it from unstressed been (used as in Standard English), linguists
often write it as BIN. Thus the distinction between She BIN running ("She
has been running for a long time") and She been running ("She has
been running")
With non-stative verbs, the
role of been is simple: it places the action in the distant past, or represents
total completion of the action. A Standard English equivalent is to add "a
long time ago". For example, She been told me that translates as,
"She told me that a long time ago".(35)
However, when been
is used with stative verbs or gerund
forms, been shows that the action began in the distant past and that it is
continuing now. Linguist John
R. Rockford suggests that a better translation when used with
stative verbs is "for a long time". For instance, in response to
"I like your new dress", one might hear Oh, I been had this dress,
meaning that the speaker has had the dress for a long time and that it isn't new.
To see the difference between the simple past and the gerund when used with been,
consider the utterances:
I been bought her
clothes means
"I bought her clothes a long time ago".
I been buyin' her
clothes means
"I've been buying her clothes for a long time".
Negation
Negatives are
formed differently from standard American English:
Use of ain't as a general
negative indicator. It can be used where Standard English would use am not, isn't,
aren't, haven't and hasn't, a trait which is not specific to AAVE. However, in
marked contrast to other varieties of English in the U.S., some speakers of
AAVE also use ain't in lieu of don't, doesn't, or didn't (e.g., I ain't know
that). Ain't had its origins in common English, but became increasingly
stigmatized since the 19th century. See also amn't.
Negative concord,
popularly called "double negation", as in I didn't go nowhere; if the
sentence is negative, all negatable forms are negated. This contrasts with
Standard English, where a double negative is considered a positive (although
this wasn't always so; see double negative).
There is also "triple" or "multiple negation", as in the
phrase I don't know nothing about no one no more, which would be "I don't
know anything about anybody anymore" in Standard English. Black English also employs a pattern
of multiple negation. Where negation is repeated throughout the clause or
sentence. For Standard English "I didn´t see anything like that
anywhere", Black English has " I ain´t see nothin´ like
dat no place". The use of the negative contraction ain´t is
distinctive of Black English, especially as a single past negative (I
ain´t see for I didn´t see or he ain´t gonna do it). Multiple
negation often implies emphasis.
In a negative
construction, an indefinite pronoun such as nobody or nothing can be inverted
with the negative verb particle for emphasis (eg. Don't nobody know the answer,
Ain't nothin' goin' on.) (12, 54)
While these are
features that AAVE has in common with Creole languages, Howe and Walker use
data from early recordings of African Nova Scotian English, Samaná
English, and Ex-Slave recordings to demonstrate that negation was inherited
from nonstandard colonial English.
The use of
"invariant be" is almost only found in Black English. This refers to
repeated actions over a considerable extent of time, and the distinction
between he walk, he walkin´, he be walkin´ has no exact parallel in
Standard English. These three verb forms have different negatives: He
don´t walk, he ain´t walkin´, he don´t be
walkin´. One might say 'He rich' instead of 'He is rich'; and 'Dey ugly'
for 'They are ugly', and so on. (14,447) A brief version is:
In African-American Vernacular English you may
omit forms of the copular verb 'be' provided all of the following conditions
are met.
It must not be accented.
You never leave 'is' out of something like 'There already is one!'
It mustn't end the
sentence. You never say, 'I don't know what it is' without the 'is'.
It mustn't begin the
sentence. You never leave out the 'is' in a question like 'Is dat right?'
It mustn't be an
infinitive. You never leave out 'be' in something like 'You got to be strong'
or an imperative like 'Be careful', or in one of those habitual aspect cases
like 'He be laughin'.'
It mustn't be in the past
tense. You never leave out 'was' or 'were'.
It mustn't be negated.
You never leave out 'ain't' from something like 'He ain't no fool.'
It mustn't be first
person singular. You never leave out the 'am' of sentences like 'I'm yo' main
man.'
The frequency of
inclusion has been shown to depend on a variety of factors. Here are some
examples:
In future sentences with gonna
or gon (see below):
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